A Season for Wonder: Black Curiosity as Cultural Leadership

Curiosity is a quiet invitation—it doesn’t shout, it stirs. And in this season, we’re following that stirring wherever it leads. July is not about proving anything; it’s about allowing ourselves to play, to stretch, to imagine what else might be possible.

So often, personal growth is framed as a set of goals or benchmarks. But what if growth isn’t always about direction or speed? What if growth can come through delight? Through exploring something we’ve never tried before—or picking up an old interest with fresh eyes? This month, we lean into joyful experimentation, trusting that curiosity is a form of intelligence, and that honoring it builds both capacity and courage.

This idea is grounded in a long Black tradition of creative exploration as survival, joy, and cultural transmission. Zora Neale Hurston, for example, moved between literature, folklore, anthropology, and performance with curiosity as her compass. She wasn’t waiting for permission. She was remembering something: that the freedom to try something new is sacred.

In Black American life—especially in kitchens, parlors, salons, gardens, and porches—curiosity has often been our inheritance and our resistance. We learned to experiment with care, resourcefulness, and rhythm. To play with form. To repurpose tradition. This month’s theme is not about productivity or performance. It is about following that whisper that says, “What if?”

In Black families, there’s almost always been a vessel that held more than it seemed. A tin of butter cookies that turned out to be a sewing kit—or a place where your grandmother kept a few extra dollars folded into tissue. A plastic tub that once held hair grease, now full of bobby pins and beads. A glass moonshine jar filled with coins. A basket under the bed holding fabric scraps for quilting. These weren’t random; they were rhythmic. They were evidence of how we’ve always gathered, preserved, and prepared. And while these examples live deeply in my Black memory, this instinct to gather what matters—however small—is something many cultures carry. I imagine many of you can trace something similar in your own family lines. What images—however blurry or vibrant—are bubbling up for you? These vessels were sacred because they held what mattered—even when what mattered looked ordinary. This month, we honor that inheritance through our Rhythm Keeper: Creative Curiosity Hour. It’s a weekly ritual of exploring what’s been calling your attention, and giving it a home. We set aside a physical vessel—a bin, basket, bag, or box—for the supplies, snippets, and in-process ideas that support your curiosity. Alongside it, a digital vesselholds links, screenshots, saved posts, and notes that inspire or guide you. It’s not about impressing anyone. It’s about trusting that your interests are worth tending to. Just like our mothers and aunties and great-grandmothers did, we’re making space for what we might need later—for what’s slowly becoming something. That instinct isn’t just cultural. It’s ancestral intelligence. And it still belongs to us.

In sharing from my own experience as a Black woman, I’m not just offering a cultural footnote. I’m offering a framework—a way to see curiosity, leadership, and identity through a lens that welcomes others to explore their own. The Black experience is not just instructive. It is instructing. And this month, I invite everyone into that classroom.

Coming soon: This theme is further explored in my special July podcast episode: “Curiosity Is an Inheritance: What Zora, Care Work, and Black Joy Have Taught Me.”